


a scavenger of shiny things

by bansheesquad (deathwailart)



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Dragon Age Lore, Gen, Headcanon, Meta, Parent-Child Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-09 00:46:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15255690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/bansheesquad
Summary: Morrigan headcanons from the Wilds and Flemeth, to Skyhold, to Kieran, and what might have been.Written for the four headcanons meme floating around tumblr a while back.





	a scavenger of shiny things

**Headcanon A: what I think realistically**  
There were conversations, half-aborted, on the matter of her sisters. Morrigan was never a stupid girl, and there comes a time when every child no matter how sharp a parent is, no matter how alone, how many times the hand is raised, asks about the stories.  
  
(If there are stories. Morrigan was not, after all, a normal girl, and Flemeth was never a normal mother. That is not the story for the moment.)  
  
Sometimes the Chasind were in a mood to talk. Tongues are freer in younger folk who see a strange young woman with a wild face haunting their borders, and the elders know well enough what can be said, it's the gulf between that whisper and fear. So they told her tales, and her trips to a civilised world she'd yet to realise wasn't so civilised after all spoke of more. Of more than her. And Flemeth was, after all, very old, so even Flemeth had told her when the lessons had come, spells and skills passed down with flourishes forgotten by the Dalish, by the hedge mages, and certainly by the Circle.  
  
Flemeth had sat for a long time. Morrigan had started to sweat, felt it cool on her back now that she'd stitched herself new robes that left between her shoulders bare where the hood didn't cover but refused to back down, and words could never be unsaid, Flemeth had--  
  
"'Tis only you and I girl, and that is quite enough to be getting on with. Don't concern yourself with all the things beyond."  
  
Flemeth's words had been as jovial as Flemeth got with outsiders only it had been her eyes, same as they'd been with the mirror.   
  
She'd never asked again. It was only her and Flemeth with no one coming for her or to stand between them. There was always a lesson with her mother after all.  
  
**Headcanon B: what I think is fucking hilarious**  
Every soul in Skyhold is sworn to secrecy - unofficially of course but considering the two involved, they know better than to ever breathe even the edge of a word - about the rookery incident. Incident _s_.  
  
It all begins with Morrigan tugging Leliana's hood down every time.  
  
And Leliana muttering about wolves and ravens and pulling tails.  
  
(What no one sees: the spymaster with her hood down, the arcane advisor with a thumb on her chin, a hair's breadth between to ask which she would prefer, she can be both after all. They do recall her laughter, the look of consternation that Dorian - correctly - labels constipation on Solas' face that echoes all the way down the stairwell of the rotunda.)  
  
Sometimes the raven is the arcane advisor, crooned to, feathers ruffled, beak scratched by the spymaster. Caught only later. Volumes of the arcane advisor's fail to arrive. Her herbs go missing. Her robes are replaced with beige long johns.  
  
It does end with one raven perched on Leliana's arm. Her leaning close. Recognising the eyes as it gives way to the flicker of magic.  
  
(Josephine organised the betting pool from the start. They might have had a solid inside bet if they'd been less absorbed in it all to notice.)  
  
**Headcanon C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends**  
In her heart of hearts, lodged in the centre is some cruel dark hungry thing.  
  
Not the hunger of knowledge that she sates however she can, no, this is secret, and guilt, and shame, and it gluts itself in the darkest hours when the candles burn to guttering tallow pyres, when all the stars go out, when the moons are hidden behind clouds. When the Fade has crowded close, that is when this thing of hers  _gnaws_.  
  
Bites.  
  
Tears.  
  
Morrigan was not raised to be loved. Morrigan was raised as a sculptor tosses a lump of clay upon the wheel, shapes it to their satisfaction, gives it the almighty whacks required, skims off what is needed with hand and knife, spins and spins and spins, fires it hot and hard to have it just right. Flemeth wished for the shape of a woman that would please her that she might pour herself into, and there was flesh and blood and bone of Flemeth's own making that went into Morrigan to render her all the more entitled to a heavier hand.  
  
Then there is Kieran. There is Kieran and some terrible creature takes root in her after he is done slumbering beneath her heart, when he has stopped growing, when the enormity of him (small, red, ugly, helpless, screaming-- she doesn't love him at first, she doesn't feel guilt for that part) is weighed and measured. When she looks at him, at her strange, wonderful boy, the boy who  _knows_  and doesn't know.   
  
One day, Kieran will know. Will know all the things she makes him ready for as the dark thing - a jagged thorn, a brittle broken bone, a shard of mirrored glass - digs in all the deeper, and she readies herself. Wonders if it makes her no better than Flemeth. Shaping another child to go out into the world for a fate, a destiny, one not of their choosing, thrust upon them by a mother's hand. Does the intent matter when he had no choice? (And she won't blame him if the anger comes, the rage, the grief, every word she will swallow--)  
  
_He is my son_ , she tells herself, but Flemeth was very much her mother after all.  
  
**Headcanon D: what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway**  
Morrigan knows before the Temple.  
  
No one asks, but Morrigan knows, and lays all the pieces out flat: the dwarf is there for the questioning and he writes to the Dalish elf who writes back, and she lays her hand flat on the grimoire carried with her since the Blight and  _knows_.  
  
Her mother is both Flemeth and Mythal, and it's a bitter thing to swallow if the Creators were gods at all, if her mother is that (and the tales make sense, what else could be made of them, how else to explain them, how else might she be so many places when Morrigan has seen their ruins, has been raised with magic known to no others that she has ever met, to prepare her for a day to come--)  
  
If her mother is Mythal, or some splintered piece of her, then what sort of mother did the elves look to once?  
  
What matters is that she knows. She knows and looks back. Looks to the eluvian. Looks to the old tales. Mother of Vengeance, Asha'bellanar, and further still to Tyrdda and her lover. To the line of Calenhad since the start, to Maric, to Alistair, to the Champion, to the Inquisition.  
  
Morrigan goes to her Temple, encourages that the correct paths be walked for she knows enough of justice and what sort of mother Mythal must be if Flemeth is any reflection of her. But she doesn't drink.  
  
She doesn't drink, and she snarls in her face, and she is free, she is free, she is  _free_.

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from:
> 
> Like a magpie, I am a scavenger of shiny things: fairy tales, dead languages, weird folk beliefs, fascinating religions, and more.  
> Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times


End file.
